to make them real and comprehensible, to translate Melanesian conditions into our own. Whatever error there is in either procedure is inevitable. An Anthropologist may be well aware of traduttore traditore, but he cannot help it — he cannot banish his few patient readers for a couple of years to a South Sea atoll, and make them live the life for themselves; he has, alas, to write books about his savages and lecture on them!
One more point about the method of presentation. Every conscientious scientific observer should state not only what he knows and how he has come to know it, but also indicate those gaps in his knowledge of which he is aware, the failures and omissions in his field-work. I have given already (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, ch. i) a full account of my credentials: length of time spent on the islands, linguistic qualifications, methods of collecting documents and statements. I shall not repeat this all here, and the few necessary additional remarks on the difficult study of native intimate life, the reader will find in the text (ch. ix, 9; ch. x, intro.; chs. xii and xiii, intros.)
The competent and experienced ethnographer and anthropologist — and only such a one is interested in the margin of accuracy, in the methodology of evidence and in the gaps in information — will easily see from the data presented throughout this book, where the documentation is thin and where it is full. When I make a simple statement without illustrating it from personal observation or adducing facts, this means that I am mainly relying on what I was told by my native informants. This is, of course, the least reliable part of my material.
